Another guest blogger joins our ranks today. Please join me in welcoming Michael Opsteegh!
This is the first in a series of posts on design issues in technical communication. I probably spent more time thinking of a series title than I spent writing this first article. The title, you see, either compelled you to read this article or skip it entirely. Had I chosen a title like “Rhetoric of Design,” you would have doubtlessly dismissed it as academic. If you hadn’t dismissed, you probably would have been disappointed. Had I chosen “Design Matters,” you may well have chalked it up as wishy-washy [insert your own colloquial, doggerel expression here] drivel. If you hadn’t, you likewise would have been disappointed.
I settled on “Discourse by Design” as a balance between the academic and the artistic, just as I hope this series will do. Design is as much about theory and research as it is aesthetic and taste. This column will attempt to balance that dichotomy through a pragmatic approach to the design of technical communication.
Just as the title of an article might compel you to read further or skip it, so too does document design. Instantly upon opening your Web page, manual, résumé, online help, or business case, the reader makes several value judgments based on the appearance of your document. Such value judgments may include the following:
- Credibility. A good document design reinforces your company or personal ethos and brand. A consistent and clear design tells the reader that you are who you say you are and that you know what you’re talking about. By the same token, a sloppy design will lead the reader to question the authenticity of the document. Just as a poorly branded email with spelling errors is a red flag, a poorly designed document brings your authority into question.
- Accuracy. A clean document design signals to the reader that you took the time to craft the document and ensured that the information contained within is correct and actionable.
- Worthiness. If it looks like you took the time to craft your document, that signals to the reader that the information may be worth looking at it. If your document looks like a dog’s breakfast, why would the reader devote any time reading it?
- Difficulty. Good document design won’t make every piece of information look easy, but poorly designed document will make any information look more difficult and will hinder the reader’s ability to parse the information.
Unfortunately, design is all too often an afterthought in technical communication. This is usually due to looming deadlines, rigid templates, and single-sourcing. The looming deadlines keep us hopping from one foot to the next, constantly struggling just to get the words written and ready to ship. Although the rigid templates ensure consistency, they also lock us into established conventions. Single-sourcing divorces verbal language from the context of visual language. Sometimes, it’s because we tend to see ourselves as merely writers rather than as information designers, and we may not have the confidence to make sound design choices. Whatever the reason, we don’t have to become artists, but we need to sharpen our design acumen, foster our creativity, and ensure that design supports the transmission of information.
Stay tuned for more posts on typography, page design, data visualization, and visual rhetoric.
Further Reading
- Dragga, Sam, and Gwendolyn Gong. Editing: The Design of Rhetoric. Amityville, N.Y: Baywood Pub. Co, 1989.
- Kostelnick, Charles. “The Rhetoric of Text Design in Professional Communication.” Technical Writing Teacher. 17.3 (1990): 189-202.
Michael Opsteegh has been a technical writer in the software and financial services industries for nine years and is currently a senior technical writer for Eyefinity. Michael specializes in professional and technical communications that include user guides, websites, policies, and procedures. He holds a master’s degree in English, rhetoric, and composition and a certificate in technical and professional writing from California State University, Long Beach. He has written articles on comics and typography in technical communication that have appeared in STC’s Intercom. Michael occasionally blogs on the topics of typography and page design at bestfontforward.com.
I’ll be interested to follow this series as this is an important topic, as you indicated. I, like you, believe that technical communication, and technical communicators, should be involved in the entire discourse communication–written and visual. Can’t wait to read more.